It’s been a long old time since Wednesday was on our screens last. Three years, in fact.
Don’t expect its heroine, Wednesday Addams, to have changed at all, though. “I don’t evolve,” she says at one point. “I cocoon.” What does that even mean? It doesn’t matter, because she delivers it with such an acid zing that it seems to make sense anyway.
That Tim Burton’s Addams family spinoff was so popular in the first place is largely down to Jenna Ortega’s astonishing performance as the titular Wednesday. Cold as an abandoned crypt, Edgar Allen Po-faced at all times and always ready with a withering comeback or two, she made the show go viral when it first came out in 2022.
Now, we’re back for more and (spoiler alert) it’s just as spooky.
The first series focused on Wednesday’s unwilling enrolment at Nevermore Academy, a school for supernaturally gifted youngsters (here coyly called ‘outcasts’). Wednesday saved Nevermore from total destruction during the season finale; now back for another academic year, she has become an equally unwilling local hero. Kids want photo ops with her; most of them treat her disdain with reverence.
That’s not all that’s changed. Wednesday’s younger brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez) has enrolled as a student and is soon running around causing chaos all by himself. Enid (Emma Myers) has embraced life as a werewolf and has moved on from her old crush Ajax. And ooh, that new headmaster (Steve Buscemi, on top scenery-chewing form) certainly seems a bit conniving, doesn’t he? Is it something to do with his pledge to make Outcasts proud again?
Sure enough, quicker than you can say ‘Oh dear’, he’s revealed his colours as a wrong’un – and that’s before we even factor in the brand new spate of murders unfolding this season. No more mystery disembowellings; this year, we have people getting their eyes pecked out by a murderous flurry of crows. Fun!
In terms of romance, there isn’t much. Wednesday’s various love interests (of which there were two last season) have been quietly shuffled off the board. Xavier (Percy Hynes White) has been packed off to another supernatural school and serial killer Tyler (Hunter Doohan, now channelling full evil mania) briefly makes an appearance from the psychiatric facility in which he’s been caged.
This leaves the show free to spin various new plot threads, some of them more successfully than others. One of the best involves Bianca (an excellent Joy Sunday), the former Queen Bee siren who now finds herself fighting not to have her scholarship revoked by the sinister Headmaster Dort. One of the worst involves Wednesday’s secret ‘stalker’, which comes with a reveal that made me eye-roll hard enough to strain an ocular nerve.
On the plus side, we do get to see more of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán as Wednesday’s parents, Morticia and Gomez. Even if their appearance does feel slightly shoehorned in, it’s always a treat to see Zeta-Jones vamp around – and her relationship with Wednesday gets a more nuanced excavation this season, too, as Morticia wrestles with the legacy of her dead sister Ophelia, and wanting to prevent history from repeating itself.
As the show continues, its flaws become more apparent. The dialogue is hokey and the continued one-liners – “writers should fill their creative cups before they begin again,” Wednesday deadpans at one point. “So I indulged in my favourite passions, torment and humiliation” – start to grate. Often, because they don’t actually make any sense.
No matter. Tim Burton’s latest work is still deliciously twisted, and goes down like a spoonful of poisoned sugar. Something this addictive certainly isn’t good for us, but we’ll keep coming back for more.
Wednesday is streaming now on Netflix
